A random blog by an aspiring author who delves into the fantasy that all things can be solved by the perfect cookie and a pair of handknit socks.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Floods and bugs and tears

Hi. I'm not sure what to say about being disconnected for over six months. I had all these fabulous intentions at the beginning of the year to write on my blog more frequently, but now it's mid-year and this is my first post. (Bows flamboyantly.) So, hi.

I'm not going to spend an hour catching you up on everything that has happened in my life since my last post. Suffice to say it wasn't anything too thrilling or I would have posted about it. So why the post now? Simply because I feel like I'm drowning and this is the safest way to pour out that stress. See the picture of Noah's steadfast little ark? That's what was floating through Pensacola this past weekend. In a 24 hour period our little city had between 17 and 21 inches of rain. From a sit around the house and read and knit standpoint it was fabulous. From a "holy shit my house is flooding" standpoint, not so much. To be honest we only got about 3 inches of water in one rarely used room in our house. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't that big of a deal. Although cleaning everything up wasn't and I did have to make a "large item pick up request" from my local garbage service to take all the icky sodden ruined books (yes I lost quite a few books), fabric (nothing too special), clothes intended for Goodwill (which also went under water), and boxes that formerly held homebrew beer (rest assured all the beer was saved as was the majority of the yarn).

It doesn't sound too bad, right? Wrong! In the course of cleaning the room we noticed some odd-looking sawdust around one of the window sills. After the use of a crow bar and a little muscle we discovered that this "sawdust" was actually residue from termites! The entire room is being eaten away from the inside out. It's horrid and sickening and I just want to cry. Today we are having a specialist come out and inspect the house to see how invasive the little fuckers buggers are. I'm hoping against all hope that they are confined to this one room. In the meantime I'm fearing that they are in every joist and beam in my house and at any moment the house will collapse on top of me and bury me and my lovely stash.

We also have a carpenter due out today to look at the damage and give us a quote on what it will take to fix things (if indeed things can be fixed). And of course we have filed an insurance claim, but neither of us can find our insurance policy to verify if we actually have termite protection. Most likely we don't as most home owner's policies consider termite control part of home maintenance and will only cover things if the house has collapsed or in imminent concern for collapse (see previous paragraph about my not-so-irrational fear).

Now in the perfect cheerful optimistic world I could look at this and see the silver lining such as:
1. Ta-da! You get a brand new creating space with electric outlets that work on every wall!
2. You've got the opportunity to remake your house the way you want it!
3. You get to start over from scratch!
4. You've been wanting to purge and reclaim space, so here's your chance!

Yeah, no. None of those things help at all. All I can see is all of our savings (and then some) being swooped away into the pockets of other people while I am up to my neck drowning in all the stuff that was salvaged from the spare room (or as we say in our house the Spare Oom). Even though the waters have subsided, I still feel like that ark is towering over me with its closely guarded collection of animals. Meanwhile in other news, rain is forecast for today.